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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

My Mage (100th Post)

Well, I have a paladin, druid, hunter and a really low level mage. Now, I like my mage, but I always think that they are better than they really are. They really don't have enough health to stand up to anyone in a melee fight. They do have the power to kill people from afar but then they really have to rest after they kill anyone because of the large mana requirements of all their spells. I wish I could have all these guys up at 70, but I really don't have the time. I work all the time and I wish I didn't so much. I have worked constantly since two wednesdays ago. Wednesday through saturday, monday through friday, then i went to tahoe with my family until today. Now, this is a vacation but I like my house and I like my room and I miss it. I have all this stuff for a good reason, which is to use it. There was internet up at tahoe but it was slow and only available from the window sill of my room. There was the Hyatt across the street and I didn't want to go over there just to play World of Warcraft. I will also be working from wednesday to saturday it looks like. This bums me out a little bit. We are returning home a little early, which I am all for. I do want some off days though. I want to just sit around and play World of Warcraft. I also want to play through the new Team Fortress 2 achievements and test out all the new heavy weapons, which one of them seems to be a sandwich to regain health when you do not have a medic around. This is a good thing to put in there, allowing heavies to be a class that is good to play when you do not necessarily have a medic on your team.

I think that heavies are a class that really insights terror into the other team. When I as a soldier round to corner and see that ugly russian heavy visage, I turn and run right away. There is no way that I can take him on. I can take him if i get the element of surprise on him, because I can get at least 2 rockets at him before he can even start shooting me. The sandwich will not be in any way replacement to a medic. I am assuming that the sandwich is a single use thing that must be switched to use. This would stop the damage output from the heavy by a significant amount, first to stop firing, switch to it, use it, and then switch back to the minigun and start firing again. So this sandwich will probably just be a out of combat use thing that you use after a fight. Also, the new five maps will have to be played so that I can get use to them. I still think Goldrush is a thing of beauty along with Dustbowl and Badlands. I hope that the new payload map is as genius and fun as Goldrush. I do admit that I have not really played a lot of Fastlane and that other new one. Also, arena mode will be able to bring the strategy of Counter-Strike Source to Team Fortress. As it is now, there might be game plans, but they are only general strategies. There are no things that people do that are incredibly specific like in Source.

Speaking of Source, I have sorta taken it up on my free time. It's an incredible game. It's fast, intense and complex. My favorite map is definitely Dust2. It's evenly balanced, and small, allowing for quick transversals of the map. The thing that really makes me mad is when I die very quickly and don't even kill anyone, or even hurt anyone. That is one thing that Halo really hooked people on, is the ease of killing people randomly and not dying easily. You can throw a grenade and, if there are any people around at all, you can probably kill one. But, Halo also made it so that you could take a grenade and not die. It was the game for people who were new to shooters and it hooked them in for other ones. I do not particularly like Halo anymore, but I have many fond memories playing it with all my friends. It also hooked me in for games like Gears of War and Counter Strike.

This furthers my belief that what you like now is primarily a product of where you were. I first played Halo at Chris Clark's house and I was really bad at it. But I liked it and kept playing and got way better, eventually becoming the best of all my friends. I then learned about the video gaming center The Matrix. We went down there and use to pay $5 an hour to play the games on their high end computers. I use to play Counter Strike and Battlefield 1942. I eventually got Counter Strike on my home computer and played there and stopped going to The Matrix for I could play all their games. I then played Halo 2 a lot after it came out. I think the success of Halo 2 rested on the ease of play online and the fact that no other games for the Xbox came out at that time. There were games like Half Life 2 and Counter-Strike Source, but I didn't have the money to do computer games then. After Halo 2, came Gears of War, then Halo 3. I liked Gears a lot more than I liked Halo 3 I think because Gears was so different and a departure from the traditional run and gun gaming. But then, I started playing more and more computer games on my brother's computer, which reigned supreme over my eMachine piece of garbage. One day, I bought the orange box and played Team Fortress 2. That game was truly amazing and I remember the day I knew I would play it forever. I bought a BFC can of monster on a friday afternoon and played until 3am. That was last October. And I am still playing it. I did take a break from it for a couple months and right now am not playing it a lot, with WoW taking up most of my time. But I am not expecting to quit any time in the near future. There really isn't game on the horizon that has me very excited. I am very on board with World of Warcraft, its upcoming expansion, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Source and Starcraft 2. Okay I lied, Starcraft 2 has me excited.

What does worry me is if World of Warcraft will get boring. The grind is pretty common in virtually all forms of WoW. Even with my level 70, I am still needing to grind rep in order to get those patterns. With Wrath coming out, all the factions that we grinded o so hard to get up will become useless because new factions will come out. Argent Dawn is not going to all of a sudden become useful again. If they do, they are rewarding old players and not encouraging new players to come in. That is the same reason that the Sha'tar will not be useful in Wrath. I think that World of Warcraft will end at level 100. By that time, levels 1-90 will be a breeze. It will fly and it will only demand about a quest or two a zone to level up. I also think that either 80-90 or 90-100 expansion will be the emerald dream. Maybe, in a bold move, Blizzard will make the Emerald Dream expansion a 80-100 expansion. Also, I think a very interesting idea would be that if you could start a character at level 60. All characters that went through the all 100 levels will be "true" level 100s but you can do it.That would allow people who want to play a chance to only have to level 40 times. That would devastate the old world and would make getting an instance group together for anything but 60+ instances impossible without prior planning. One thing that would also not surprise me is if Blizzard made every instance available in Heroic mode. If Razorfen Downs was a 80 instance, I might be encouraged to go do it. That is the only reason I am doing things like The Botanica and Ramparts. I might be able to experience Blackfathom Deeps and Maruadan and Dire Maul. Also, it would not surprise me if they tuned down Upper Blackrock Spire and Molten Core and other old raids and even Burning Crusade raids to 5-mans and made it a heroic. If Blizzard did those things, it might breathe old life back into a dead world.

4 comments:

Mfrelier
said...

How about Fable 2? That has me excited and you were the one that turned me on to it. Also, i totally agree about playability of some games over time. Anything can seem awesome if you take a break from it.

Count me in as someone who's excited about Fable II. Even though Fable is a very flawed game in some senses, I find myself coming back to it often.

And consider this about WoW: What if it DOES get boring?

You'll have time to play other games that don't suck you into an infinite opiate-like addictive cycle. And that's a good thing. Plus, you might find time to go do stuff that's not playing video games. For the most part, though, I hate non-video game related activites. So I don't see much point in that.

Speaking of addiction, I think Bethesda will probably soon have me under their protective, neurotic wing with Fallout 3. After finishing Oblivion, I knew this game would find its way into my daily video game related websearches. (That's the worst thing I've ever typed about anything)

So, I've been watching the trailer. And any clip I can find. And reading every article I can get my hands on. It sounds like Oblivion + Gears + BioShock. Do you think I may have overhyped this game just a little?